Bill C-5

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

This enactment amends the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to, among other things, repeal certain mandatory minimum penalties, allow for a greater use of conditional sentences and establish diversion measures for simple drug possession offences.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

In a previous Parliament under this Liberal government, Bill C-5 reduced a number of mandatory minimum penalties. Some of these mandatory minimum penalties were related to drug trafficking, and the import and export of drugs. These schedule I drugs include fentanyl. As a result of legislation like this, we're seeing that the people involved in this deadly fentanyl trade are getting back out on the streets more quickly. Obviously, you guys are catching them again in the act. It's clear that mandatory minimum penalties keep these drug pushers in prison for longer, which hopefully acts as a deterrent for them continuing that activity, or at least takes them off the street.

What is the time period between when these criminals get back on the street and when you catch them? Are they getting caught 10 years later, or are you finding that it's more frequent?

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you so much to everyone for being here.

Zipp, I see you and I see your mom behind you. There's an innate human desire to belong and feel included, and we don't want to feel that we're different. Ironically, it's our difference that makes us so special.

School is not a great place for a lot of kids. For kids who learn differently, it's hard. It's really hard. I just want to say that I appreciate your being here. You're young, and you're brave and courageous. You have some support around you, which is important.

I think all of us in this room remember everything that happened to us in those first eight years of our lives in elementary school, but we don't know where our car keys are. It's the most formative part of our life. Thank you for sharing your stories.

I want to dive in further, if I can, with Mylène.

I think the key in all of this is ensuring that we have legislation that puts consequences in place against hate crime so that it doesn't happen. One of the things that we've seen repeatedly.... Stats Canada released a crazy press release today, saying that 34% of all homicides were committed by a criminal who was out on bail or another form of release. Those are historic numbers.

In Peterborough, we had a hate crime that went public nationally, which I was a part of in terms of standing up for this person: “Pride flag burning, homophobic slurs lead to hate crime arrest in Peterborough”. The man who was charged was out violating his probation and violating his parole.

We know that Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 are two pieces of legislation right now in the House of Commons that are contributing to violent repeat offenders being out and committing crimes.

My question for you, Mylène, is this: Would you like to see those bills altered and pulled back? Would you like to see stronger bail reform so that hate crimes have consequences tied to them?

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that was probably the longest petitions segment we have had in a long time, but I am glad everybody had a chance to deliver petitions signed by their constituents, or signed by their EDAs. Some of our friends across the way probably put them together, but nonetheless, who am I to judge?

Why are we here? We are here once again talking about SDTC, the Liberal green slush fund. I think this is the third time I have had a chance to speak to this. Every time we get a chance to speak to this, we go back into our ridings and we hear more anger and frustration from our constituents regarding the NDP-Liberal government. I will just warn the Speaker that he is probably going to get a lot of points of order from our friends down along the way. I see my friend, another B.C. counterpart from the NDP down there, who likes to filibuster. He likes to take up a lot of the Conservatives' time and protest all the time about all the bad stuff that us Conservatives do, yet he has propped up the government for four years now.

The NDP-Liberal government has now frozen the business of the House for weeks because of its green slush fund scandal. We have been unable to deal with any of the pressing issues facing Canadians, because it refuses to release the documents, the unredacted documents, detailing over $400 million of taxpayer funds that were handed to Liberal insiders. That is the honest to goodness truth. There were over 186 conflicts of interest. A senior civil servant slammed the Liberal government's outright incompetence. The Auditor General said that the industry minister did not sufficiently monitor contracts given to Liberal insiders.

As a matter of fact, the chair of SDTC directed funds right to her own organization. That is what we are talking about today. That is what we have been talking about for the last weeks, or months, really. It is shocking. I have been a member of Parliament for nine years, and I was elected during the sunny ways campaign, where the member for Papineau stood before Canadians and said that when he was Prime Minister, his government would follow the law and be the most open government in the history of our country.

What have we seen is scandal after scandal after scandal. What is shocking to me is how the NDP just fell in line with the Liberals and have really carried the water for them many times. It is always funny when pieces of legislation come before the House and we hear, “Just get it to committee. We will do good work at committee and everybody can have a say in it.” What we have seen over the last four years, whether it is with the WE scandal, SDTC or so many more, is that the NDP has carried the water for the corrupt Liberal government.

New Democrats stand up and like to be holier than thou and very sanctimonious in their deliberations and interventions. They say, “How dare they?” Their leader puffs up his chest and says, “I'm right here, bro” and is on social media talking tough. He did a press conference before QP today, where he was all tough talk and what have we.

The leader of the NDP stood before Canadians and ripped up the agreement between the two parties, and then quickly taped it up and said, “I'm sorry, dear. I didn't mean to do that. I love you.” Every step of the way, he has propped up these guys. Just recently, he once again chose the Prime Minister over Canadians. It is shocking time and time again. He says that he is against the carbon tax, yet he has voted 24 times, maybe even more, in favour of it.

Liberals could end this right now by handing over the documents Parliament requested so that we can allow the RCMP to do its job and investigate the Liberal cronies at SDTC, but they will not do that.

Instead, Liberals stand before the cameras and say, “If only the Conservatives would stop doing what they are doing.” We are the only ones doing our job and making sure that the government is held to account for $400 million. I see the gallery is filling up again. It is Wednesday afternoon after question period and we have a semi-full gallery. I want to let the people in the gallery know that it is $400 million.

What do the Liberals want us to do? They want us to send it to committee, to let the committee study it and see if there was any malfeasance or bad stuff going on. I have said before that, if somebody steals from you, Mr. Speaker, do you go to a committee or do you go to the RCMP? That is why we are here today.

Another thing I want to talk about today, one that is near and dear to me, is another crisis that is taking place, and that is the opioid crisis. The reason I bring that up is for us to imagine how far that $400 million could have gone to help the opioid crisis. How many beds could that $400 million have built?

The Liberals stand and say it was the Conservatives who cut all the jobs at CBSA, but in 2014-15, one of the highest amounts of funding went to the CBSA. Once the Liberal government and the Prime Minister were in place, in 2016-17, over 1,000 jobs were cut. Over $440 million were cut. It is in the Liberals' own public accounts. No one has to believe me. Canadians can bring up the public accounts and see for themselves.

Let us get back to what I was talking about: the opioid crisis. We are powerless to stop illicit drugs from coming into our country. Over 47,000 Canadians have tragically lost their lives to the opioid crisis since 2016, and that situation continues to worsen. In British Columbia, the decriminalization of hard drugs was touted as a solution to reduce stigma and save lives, yet the policy failed. It failed to deliver the intended results. Instead, communities have seen increased drug use in public spaces, needles outside of schools and in playgrounds, public disorder, diversion to youth and organized crime, and no meaningful reductions in overdose deaths.

I am going to say this again because I believe it bears repeating. Overdose is the leading cause of death for youth aged 10 to 18 in the province of British Columbia. That is staggering. I ask Canadians listening in and those in the gallery to look around their neighbourhoods and communities. Do their communities look the same as they did nine years ago? They do not.

I can say that it was not that way before the Prime Minister, and it will not be that way when we elect a strong Conservative prime minister who will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. The sole focus of the next Conservative government is cleaning up the mess that the Liberal government has made.

We cannot talk about the opioid crisis without talking about safe supply programs, where these government-funded drugs are being diverted and sold illegally, undermining their purpose and fuelling addiction in vulnerable populations, including our youth. The situation is further exacerbated by the flow of deadly substances like fentanyl across our porous borders.

I talked about this earlier. Liberals like to blame Stephen Harper and the former Conservative government, yet it is the government that has been in power for nine years that cut funds and jobs at the CBSA for consecutive years when it took power. The Liberals like to blame everybody but themselves.

Despite clear evidence of dangers posed by these substances, enforcement and border controls remain insufficient to stem the tide. Clearly, stopping fentanyl from entering our country and destroying our communities is not a priority for the government. The government has spent billions on policies that perpetuate addiction, without addressing the root causes or providing support for treatment and recovery.

I will bring it back to the topic we are talking about today: the SDTC fund, where over $440 million of Canadian taxpayer funds was stolen and divvied out by a Liberal-appointed committee to the chair, to other friends and to families and colleagues of the Liberals. Canadians should be outraged at this. How can the Liberals continue to ignore the pleas of families and communities devastated by this crisis? They have had nine years, and all they have been doing is making it worse.

Bill C-5 is a classic example of the Prime Minister's hug-a-thug, revolving-door criminal justice policy that is making our communities unsafe. Bill C-5 eliminated mandatory jail time for certain violent offenders. We want jail, not bail, for criminals who will endanger Canadians. This is why we introduced a motion in the House this week calling on the NDP-Liberal government to reverse Bill C-5, bring in harsher jail sentences for drug kingpins, ban precursor chemicals that organized crime groups use to make deadly fentanyl, scan the containers at our ports and put more boots on the ground at our borders. Ninety-nine per cent of the containers that come through our borders are not scanned. It is unbelievable.

Unfortunately, to Canadians' shock and awe, the Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition voted against it. It voted against the safety of our communities and of Canadians. I ask this of any Canadian who is watching right now: Is this the government they elected in 2015? Is this what they expected? Many Canadians took the bait, hook, line and sinker. The Prime Minister likes to stand before Canadians, put his hand on his heart and dab away a fake tear. He has lied, misled Canadians all along the way.

I cannot talk about the opioid crisis without talking about young Brianna MacDonald. For those who might be just tuning in and those in the gallery, Brianna MacDonald was a 12-year-old. She was on the streets of Abbotsford. She turned 13 on July 15. That is my son's birthday. She died on August 23 in a homeless encampment from overdose. That is my daughter's birthday. Lance Charles, her dad, and Sarah MacDonald were here. Over 30 times, they took Brianna to the hospital to plead for help, for health care, for the doctors or somebody to intervene and help Brianna. What were they given? They were told that if Brianna wanted to kill herself, it was her prerogative. Instead of help, Brianna was given needles and instructions on how to do the drugs better. She was 13 years of age.

I cannot talk about the Liberal government and its failed soft-on-crime, hug-a-thug policies, without talking about Mr. Hubbard in my community. Mr. Hubbard is a senior. He was out in the morning and returned home in the afternoon to find his place being looted by criminals to fuel their drug addiction. He tried stopping them. What happened was that they drove over him, dragged him down the road and left him for dead.

We are tough in northern B.C., in our region. Mr. Hubbard lived, but he has had reconstructive surgery on his face, and he almost lost his arm. He has to endure more operations down the road. However, the same day this incident took place, the RCMP caught a couple of the perpetrators. Within 24 hours, they were back out on the street. It is crazy, but that is what we are seeing time and again from this hug-a-thug Liberal Prime Minister and his friends in the NDP. They talk a big game; they always talk about doing the right thing, yet they fail Canadians every time they get a chance.

We talked about the $400 million of taxpayer funds taken out of the pockets of Canadians and handed to Liberal insiders. We talked about the 186 conflicts of interest that were found by the Auditor General. Again, this debate could end right now if the Liberals just turned over the documents, unredacted, so that the RCMP could have a look at them and see what went on. Instead, they continue to try to cover their tracks and defend their corrupt friends. Meanwhile, Canada is broken. Time and again, we receive messages from our constituents, who are frustrated: “Can't you do anything about the government? Can't you call an election? Can't you force an election?” We are trying.

Canadians are struggling just to get by while the Liberals are focused on enriching their corrupt friends. However, it should not surprise anyone. The legacy of the Prime Minister is one of chaos, scandal, corruption and cover-up, and it did not start today with the green slush fund. It has been a nine-year pattern of dodging accountability and transparency. Did he not say that his was going to be the most transparent government in the history of the country? Somehow, the NDP and the Bloc are still supporting the Prime Minister.

I could go on for hours about the scandals and conflicts of interest that the Prime Minister and the Liberal government have been caught in: the Aga Khan, WE Charity, SNC-Lavalin, blackface, clam scam, arrive scam, GC Strategies, cash for access, gropegate, elbowgate, surf is up in Tofino, the Emergencies Act, sole-sourced contracts, foreign interference and the condo on Billionaires' Row with his media buddy.

The latest scandal to rock the government is, of course, the other Randy. First, he found himself in hot water when texts emerged of a Randy texting the business partners of a shady, fraudulent company. If anybody has seen these text messages, they know that it is an actual shakedown of $500,000. It is a strict no-no for Crown ministers to be caught bidding on federal contracts, so the former minister explained that it was the actions of another Randy, an individual who, as far as we know now, does not exist. His partner said that it was autocorrect nine times. What a farce.

Honestly, the excuses we get from the Liberal front bench on their misgivings is really farcical. I am sure they are going to write a movie about it at some point; all of these scandals and the corruption that take place are really out of a Hollywood script.

All I have to say is that it was not this way before the current Prime Minister. It will not be this way when Canadians elect a strong Conservative prime minister who will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.

Mental Health and Addictions

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, the weak Prime Minister has lost control of our borders. He started by teaming up with the British Columbia NDP to decriminalize fentanyl. He has kept 80% of fentanyl precursor ingredients legal. He allows 99% of shipping containers to come into our country uninspected. He passed Bill C-5, which gives house arrest to the kingpins who produce that poison.

Will the Prime Minister reverse his radical liberalization of drugs so that not one more mother will have the heartbreak of losing a child to an overdose?

Opposition Motion—Repeal of Bill C-5

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Speaker, I wanted to begin my speech by talking about the only part of the Conservative motion that I agree with: the government's lax approach at our borders. However, after hearing my Conservative colleagues talk about the opioid crisis the way they did, I decided to start on a different vein, because I found what they said to be completely mind-boggling. I may come back to how the government is managing our borders, if I have enough time.

As is often the case when it comes to the opioid crisis, the Conservative motion is inaccurate, if not downright misleading. Unfortunately, the Conservatives' speeches were full of misinformation. At no time was the government ever involved in the radical liberalization of drugs, as the Conservative Party is suggesting. We do not even know whether that means anything. Are they talking about the decriminalization of marijuana? Are they talking about the diversion measures set out in the Criminal Code via Bill C-5? Are they talking about the pilot project in British Columbia? If so, none of those measures deserve to be described as a radical liberalization of drugs.

While the borders are indeed lax and more must be done to secure them, the part of the motion that mentions reduced sentences for drug kingpins has zero basis in fact. Is it actually about Bill C‑5, which eliminated certain minimum sentences? If so, are the Conservatives insinuating that eliminating minimum sentences caused thousands of people to die, as a member said earlier? That is an absurd idea for sure.

We know that the causes of the opioid crisis are far more complex and far-reaching than the Conservative Party's motion suggests. They range from mental health and poverty to the housing shortage, legal opioid prescriptions and more. Crime and the contamination of drugs with opioids is certainly a big part of the problem, but the Conservatives' magical solution of putting everyone in jail, be they victim or criminal, is not a sustainable solution. It is actually no solution at all. That is why it would be impossible for us to vote in favour of the Conservatives' motion. The Conservatives are offering up simplistic solutions to complex problems. That is something we see too often in the House, unfortunately.

My colleague from Rivière-du-Nord spoke at length about Bill C-5 and the fact that we had proposed splitting it in two because it dealt with two elements that are both extremely important but different, so I will not go into that again. I will talk more about diversion measures rather than mandatory minimums.

The diversion measures included in Bill C-5 were aimed at only one provision of the Criminal Code and that was simple drug possession. I do not think this has been said enough so far, but the goal of this approach is to divert people with drug problems who do not necessarily pose a threat to public safety away from the justice system. The idea behind diversion is to relieve the courts of the burden of dealing with drug users so that resources can be dedicated to the real threat posed by drug traffickers. Diversion is not the same as legalizing all drugs. A person who systematically refuses to abide by the alternatives proposed by the justice system and who uses drugs in a way that is dangerous to others can still be prosecuted.

The Bloc Québécois supported this change of approach because the war on drugs, as waged in the U.S. by President Nixon, for example, is simply not working. People with substance use problems need health care and social services. Putting them in prison will certainly not improve their fate. It is better to focus our resources on helping as many people as possible so that they can become productive members of society again and to ensure that our courts can focus on prosecuting the real criminals who sell harmful drugs, cut with synthetic drugs.

Our approach to substance abuse is to see drug use as a public health issue, not a strictly criminal one. While the diversion approach is a step in the right direction, the fact remains that the federal government has, in a way, done only half the job. Diversion is modelled on Portugal's highly successful approach. However, their success is also due to the fact that they have invested heavily in social services and in services directly on the ground.

If the federal government were sincere about taking this approach, it would increase health transfers to the provinces and provide more funding to community organizations working on the ground.

The Bloc Québécois's approach is also consistent with the Quebec government's 2022-25 national strategy for preventing overdoses involving psychoactive substances. The strategy proposes actions based on a harm reduction model and promotes the idea of seeing users as voluntary participants, rather than criminalizing them. The strategy addresses not only opioids, but other psychoactive substances as well, given the evolving epidemiological situation. It includes 15 measures divided among seven clearly defined areas of action. I will name a few. Without reviewing everything, it is fascinating to see what the Quebec government is doing.

For starters, there is education and awareness, which involves disseminating relevant information and raising awareness among the general public about the risk of overdose from psychoactive substances. We need to raise awareness among various communities about user stigma. Then there is overdose prevention and harm reduction, which involves strengthening and improving access to naloxone, a fast-acting drug that temporarily reverses the effects of an opioid overdose, and strengthening and expanding the availability of supervised consumption services.

Let us not forget that the Conservative Party, under Stephen Harper, did everything it could to undermine the supervised injection site programs of Quebec and the provinces by refusing to grant the sites an exemption so that they could store the drugs that they were providing. The Supreme Court put the then Canadian government in its place. That is why I am so surprised today to see the leader of the Conservative Party denouncing these initiatives and safe supply programs.

The Conservatives seem to forget that their ideologically driven approach to problems is often inconsistent with fundamental rights. Not only was their opposition to drug-related health care ruled incompatible with our rights, but some of the mandatory minimum sentences they introduced to the Criminal Code were also struck down.

The programs that supply drugs to patients are justified by the fact that they save lives. These programs allow people with an addiction to consume a substance whose content is known, which helps prevent overdoses. What is more, thanks to these programs, the individuals receive social services and health care and come in contact with social workers and nurses. This creates a range of benefits, such as detecting and treating STIs, which can become the first step on the long road to ending addiction.

Getting back to the measures in the Quebec government's national strategy, the next one is public policies and regulations. The aim is to develop safer supply practices. Unlike supervised injection sites, where people use drugs under supervision, safer supply programs provide prescription drugs to prevent overdoses. These programs target individuals who would otherwise purchase drugs on the black market, which is highly risky.

The strategy also talks about monitoring and surveillance; evaluation, research and training; addiction treatment; and pain treatment. I think these measures work much better than putting victims of drug addiction behind bars, as it were.

This strategy is based on pragmatism and compassion, two values that are antithetical to the Conservatives' ideological approach.

I know that I only have a little time left, but I want to come back to border management. The past few years have not been easy. We had to repeatedly remind the government to take action at the border. It was reactive, not proactive. We saw the same thing recently with new President-elect Trump, who made campaign threats to deport millions of people. We thought it seemed likely that these people would try to come to Canada, so we needed to secure the border. When I asked the Minister of Public Safety about it the day after the U.S. election, he told me that everything was fine at the borders and that there was really nothing to stress about there.

Today, we learn that the government is going to spend $1 billion on a plan to secure the border. The government is talking about buying helicopters and drones. I mentioned one solution earlier, which is to allow border services officers to patrol between border crossings. Right now, an order in council prevents that from happening. There are all sorts of solutions. We definitely need to improve border security. That is one of the solutions that would work better than what the Conservative Party is proposing in this motion.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Madam Speaker, I still believe that Bill C‑5 is a good bill with a good foundation. Unfortunately, the amendments we proposed were rejected, leaving us with provisions that are far from perfect.

The point that my colleague raised is worrisome. However, I think we need to be careful when we look at justice statistics. We need to consider each case individually. When a court is seized with issue X in the case of Mr. Y or Ms. W, it gives one decision. Another judge in a different case involving the same provisions will give another decision, because the circumstances are different and the accused is different. All sorts of factors need to be taken into account.

My colleague is right. What he is telling us is serious. However, I would like to look at those statistics and cases individually. I still believe that we have to trust our justice system and our courts to make the most appropriate decisions based on the circumstances.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to quote Marc Bellemare, who has represented victims of crime in Quebec since 1979. He was Quebec's justice minister from 2003 to 2004. Here is what he had to say about Bill C‑5: “It is repugnant that this law applies to violent criminals. Last year, 112 of the 569 offenders convicted of sex assault in Quebec were sentenced to house arrest, a generous gift made possible by [this Prime Minister 's] government's Bill C‑5, which has been in effect since November 17, 2022.” He then went on to cite a long list of cases.

How can the member support the substance of a bill like this?

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia.

What our Conservative colleagues are essentially proposing is to turn back the clock and basically cancel Bill C-5, which already passed. They are doing so for all sorts of reasons that could be called fallacious, false or unfounded. First, Bill C-5 sought to do two things: repeal mandatory minimum penalties in many situations and establish diversion measures for simple drug possession offences. We were among those who, at the time, asked for Bill C-5 to be split. We felt that these were indeed two separate issues and that it would have been more effective to deal with them one at a time. However, as it is so often the case with these things, the government tried to get us to swallow a bitter pill with a bit of honey. We had to vote on both at the same time, even though we had reservations about some aspects of both issues. Still, we agreed on the spirit of the bill.

I will start with mandatory minimum penalties, or MMPs, which do not work at all. That has been demonstrated many times. MMPs are useful for someone who wants to decide for the judge what sentence should be handed down. However, commentators, criminologists, lawyers and others who have studied this issue have all said that MMPs do not work and do not reduce crime. Professor Tonry, an American criminologist who researched and wrote about this subject, stated the following:

Evaluated in terms of their stated substantive objectives, mandatory penalties do not work. The record is clear…that mandatory penalty laws shift power from judges to prosecutors, meet with widespread circumvention, produce dislocations in case processing....

In fact, when Crown prosecutors find themself with a case that they may or may not have to litigate, they will often be less enthusiastic about negotiating a deal with the defence attorney if there is already a mandatory minimum sentence in place. The case will end up going to trial because the Crown knows there is a minimum sentence. They are guaranteed that minimum if the individual is found guilty. If there is no mandatory minimum sentence, there is no knowing what the judge will decide. Not knowing in advance encourages discussions between the lawyers, who often come to an agreement.

This is between two experienced lawyers who come to a compromise by realizing that there is a good chance that the court, if it were hearing the case, would come to a similar conclusion. Then comes an agreement where everyone is satisfied with the sentence that will be applied. The courts do not get bogged down with an extra case, which would be a very good outcome these days. In our view, and in the view of Professor Tonry and many other observers, this is a substantial argument.

Another argument against mandatory minimum sentences is that they are unconstitutional. The Supreme Court of Canada said as much before Bill C‑5 was passed. That was the inspiration for it. The Supreme Court told us that it was unconstitutional. Mandatory minimum sentences violate section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects people from “cruel and unusual treatment or punishment”. Key decisions in this area include Nur in 2015, Lloyd in 2016 and Boudreault in 2018. These may be the most seminal cases on this subject, but many other court decisions have always been along the same lines: mandatory minimums hurt more than they help.

In Lloyd, the Supreme Court addressed another aspect when it said:

Another solution would be for Parliament to build a safety valve that would allow judges to exempt outliers for whom the mandatory minimum will constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Residual judicial discretion for exceptional cases is a technique widely used to avoid injustice and constitutional infirmity in other countries....

What we are being told is that mandatory minimum sentences go against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that if we want to keep them, there needs to be a safety valve to exempt outliers. That is what the Bloc Québécois proposed. I sat on the Standing Committee on Justice during the discussions on Bill C-5, and I moved a series of amendments to the bill. First there was a general amendment.

We proposed adding section 718.11 to the Criminal Code, which would say:

718.11 The court may waive any minimum punishment of imprisonment under this Act if it considers that exceptional circumstances warrant it and that the imposition of a minimum punishment would be unfair.

That is exactly what the Supreme Court said. To be clear, I did not take my cue from the Supreme Court. The idea came from a criminologist during the study of Bill C‑5. I moved that amendment, but it was ruled inadmissible. I challenged the chair's ruling, but every single member of the committee, all the Liberals, NDP and Conservatives, voted against me. I said I understood that my proposal exceeded the scope of Bill C‑5, and so we began the clause-by-clause study.

In clause 10, I proposed the following:

(2.1) The court may waive the minimum term of imprisonment under paragraph (2)(b) if it considers that exceptional circumstances warrant it.

What was the result? The Liberals, Conservatives and NDP opposed it. So be it; clause 11 also mentioned a minimum sentence. Once again, I suggested the same provision so that the court could use it to waive the minimum sentence in exceptional circumstances. Once again, the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP opposed my proposal.

The same thing happened with clause 12. In fact, clauses 12 and 13 dealt with crimes involving the use of a firearm. We in the Bloc Québécois felt that this was serious enough to send a clear message to the courts that the minimum sentence should be applied, but with the possibility of waiving it in exceptional circumstances. I proposed the same provision in clauses 12 and 13, specifically exceptions for exceptional circumstances. I got the same result. The Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats all opposed my proposal.

That is why I am a little surprised today to see the Conservatives proposing to repeal Bill C-5 or to backtrack on the provisions of Bill C‑5 by adding mandatory minimum sentences, when they know full well that the Supreme Court has ruled that this is unconstitutional.

What is more, the Conservatives rejected my amendments, which would have allowed mandatory minimum sentences to be introduced for the most serious crimes, but with a safety valve that would be acceptable to the Supreme Court according to the decisions I cited earlier, including the Lloyd decision. Furthermore, this provision met the objectives and responded to the concerns of all the experts who appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice during the meetings on Bill C‑5. No, they rejected all that, but now they want to go back in time. This is an incomprehensible decision that I would describe as illogical and irrational.

Furthermore, as I was saying, MMPs are ineffective and unconstitutional. They are also costly, because more people are sent to prison. MMPs cost a lot of money and they are ineffective. That is what experts are saying. A potential criminal is not going to think twice about committing a certain crime because there is an MMP. As far as I know, or as far as the experts know, no one wonders what the MMP is before robbing a bank or killing someone. That just does not happen.

There is also the diversion aspect. That was the second part of Bill C‑5. We were in favour of diversion. The Bloc Québécois believes in rehabilitation, but, of course, diversion might not be the best idea for serious crimes. At the very least, more thought would need to go into that.

However, in the case of simple drug possession, we are talking about a health problem. We are talking about people who are addicted to drugs and, for medical and health reasons, they have to inject themselves with dangerous substances. We think that those individuals need treatment, not jail time.

I would have liked to talk about our proposals—

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Speaker, today we are talking about the deaths of 47,000 Canadians, many of them young people. Forty-seven thousand Canadians have died in the last number of years in drug-related deaths. Two of them, I am going to be talking about today.

Young Brianna MacDonald was 13 years old when she overdosed. She was found in a homeless encampment after having a cardiac arrest. She was 13, still a child. Her parents tried to get her into treatment for months. They could give her free crack pipes from the government, but they could not get treatment for her. There was also Kamilah Sword, 14 years old, who died of a drug overdose. Again, hooked on drugs from the government's so-called safe supply, which I will talk about shortly.

It is 47,000 people, many of them young people, many of them young children. It is all of their parents, their siblings and their friends. Beyond that, it is all the people in drug psychosis who have committed violent acts and the innocent people they have hurt with violent break and enters, sexual assaults and murders. It is all of the crime and mayhem to our small businesses, and the decay in our cities and in our once safe communities.

We have seen, in a very short amount of time in our cities, in our towns, in rural Canada, from coast to coast to coast, this drug crisis wreak havoc on our communities. Innocent young people have died. I have been in this place now for five years, and what have we heard as the solution, the proposal to this radical liberalization of drugs in this country? From the NDP members and the Liberals they support, their solution to all these drug deaths is more drugs, taxpayer-funded government drugs, on a mass scale, with no accountability.

What is really tragic is that, for this taxpayer-funded so-called safe supply, there is really nothing safe about it. Totally predictably, it is being diverted to vulnerable people, to young people. A drug addict, someone addicted to drugs, will go and get their so-called safe supply from the taxpayer. They will be provided many pills.

What has been happening is that drug dealers will wait outside the pharmacy. The person addicted to drugs will come out with their so-called safe supply and sell it to the drug dealer for either harsher drugs, like heroin or fentanyl, or for cash so they can buy some food, some cigarettes, alcohol or whatever it might be, another substance. They are taking the government safe supply and they are exchanging it with a drug dealer for something harsher. The drug dealer is then taking this so-called safe supply to kids, for example, and saying, “Oh, it is safe. It is government regulated. It will be a nice high.”

The government and taxpayers are funding the new gateway drug for kids, which has killed Kamilah Sword, Brianna MacDonald and thousands more young people in this country. The National Post and others have done phenomenal investigative journalism on this, and when they visited Kamilah Sword's community, they talked to many of her friends.

I will call one of her friends “Hannah”. It is not her real name. She said that kids aged 11 to 17 in this young lady's circles, kids who should be watching cartoons and having snacks after school, were using taxpayer-funded drugs they bought off drug dealers. Some are 11 years old. Of course, these drug dealers glamorize it saying, “Oh, it will be great. It will be fun.” They downplay the risks.

Hannah said that, once they get you hooked on this safe supply, then they push heroin. They are pushing it on 11 year olds and 13 year olds. This how we have Ms. MacDonald ending up dead, having a heart attack. They start on something that is so-called safe and then end up dead on fentanyl.

One of Kamilah's friends' mothers said that she had never met so many teenagers who were drug addicts before, and that a huge majority of teens were using because it was so easily available. She is talking about government safe supply. She said she had to pull her daughter out of that community because it was just so readily available, so tempting. In order to save her daughter's life, she had to pull her out of the community. That is a brave mom and a strong mom, but not all parents are able to do that, not all parents have that ability.

We are also seeing the vulnerability of first nations. Another young woman who was interviewed was a first nations woman. Her name was Jennifer and she was talking about how drug dealers are, same thing, taking these safe supply drugs, massive amounts of them, and selling them for dirt cheap on first nations reserves to vulnerable kids. As if they did not have enough issues to deal with, now there is a flood of taxpayer-funded government safe supply. It is wrong what is being done. It is so wrong that doctors are starting to speak out.

In fact, one is Dr. Michael Lester, a Toronto-based addictions physician. Again, this is Dr. Lester's specialty. He said, “I had several patients who were drug-free for a long time and just couldn’t resist the temptation of this very cheap hydromorphone”, which is the safe supply, “that was now on the street.”

He also said, “Every addiction medicine doctor I’ve spoken to has told me that, on a daily basis in their offices, they’re dealing with diverted hydromorphone, either from new clients coming in addicted to it, or patients of theirs that are using it as a drug of abuse.” It is just so readily available and it is so tempting to people struggling to try to move on from their addictions that doctors are saying that what they are seeing is completely unacceptable.

It is getting so bad that the B. C. government actually had to reverse course. The B.C. government had asked the Liberals, who would gladly help, to decriminalize things like small possession. However, we know that it was not small possession as the possession amount could have killed hundreds of people with things like fentanyl. The B.C. government decriminalized toxic drugs like heroin, fentanyl and meth for just over a year before the public outrage and the disorder that it caused forced the B.C. government to move back and ask the Liberals to help them with that.

This is really wild, but it is just in line with all of this. In that same psychotic government policy year, the top doctor in B.C., Dr. Bonnie Henry ordered vending machines at ERs and hospitals not for Pepsi, Coke or a granola bar, but for free crack pipes. Someone would be walking into an ER with a horrible injury and pass a free crack pipe. They could just get one on their way out like a goody bag.

Obviously, the public outrage on both of these things was fierce, and rightfully so, and both of these things have now been pulled back, thankfully. However, it just shows how far the government is ready to go. That is the reality of where these policies are going.

The people responsible for all of these deaths, over 47,000 deaths, the drug dealers, the drug traffickers, the drug importers and exporters who are bringing in the ingredients and importing the drugs, the ones who are producing the drugs in the meth labs and then of course those pushing them on people, that is, drug importers, drug producers and drug dealers, have a lot of blood on their hands. We should be taking strong measures to ensure that they are punished. A message should be sent to all the other ones that, if they do this, they will be punished and go to jail for a long time. That is what we should be doing or, we would think, that is what would be the case already.

That was the case. There was mandatory prison time for drug trafficking, for drug importing and for drug production. There was, and then the Liberals came along and brought forward Bill C-5, despite all of those deaths.

Do members want to know what Bill C-5 did? It eliminated mandatory prison time for drug traffickers, drug producers and drug importers. All of the people responsible for killing over 47,000 people and causing unbelievable mayhem and destruction in our communities no longer have mandatory prison times. It has been repeated over and over again that Bill C-5's specific goal was that fewer people would go to prison.

Those people are murderers. They are the reason that Kamilah Sword, 14 years old, is dead and Brianna MacDonald is dead. Under a Conservative government, there will be justice for these young women. There will be justice for the 47,000 people who have been killed by these drug traffickers, importers and producers. They will be held accountable.

The porous border we have seen over the last number of years under the government will also be shored up. Did members know that after nine years of the Liberal government, less than 1% of the containers we bring in, all of our shipments, all of our Amazon orders, all of our produce, is checked? That is where guns, drugs and precursors to drugs are coming in. It is less than 1%.

Our approach will be to take the border seriously, invest in scanning technology and hold the monsters who are responsible for killing these 47,000 people and causing destruction and mayhem in our communities responsible for that. They will have to pay for what they have done. They will go to jail, hopefully for a very long time under a Conservative majority government. Rest assured.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, the reality is that Bill C‑5 allows drug dealers and producers to serve Netflix sentences and stay out of jail. The Bloc Québécois made a serious mistake by supporting Bill C‑5. That is why the Bloc Québécois had to do a U-turn and support a Conservative bill. I do not know if the member knows which bill he voted for, but he later voted to repeal Bill C‑5.

I do not know if the Bloc Québécois is doing another U-turn now to support Bill C‑5, but the Bloc Québécois supports all the policies that free criminals and all the policies that have resulted in out-of-control crime. The Conservatives' Bill C‑325 will repeal Bill C‑5 and put drug dealers in jail instead of handing them Netflix sentences. That is common sense. I hope the Bloc Québécois stays true to that—

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Speaker, this afternoon, the Leader of the Opposition has been telling us that Bill C‑5 is responsible for the toxic drug crisis, and it sounds like he is serious. He has been telling us that Bill C‑5, which sought to decriminalize simple possession and not penalize addicts or take them to court, would trigger an extraordinary crisis. He has been telling us that Bill C‑5 will let drug lords off the hook. I imagine he knows those people.

Can he name them for us?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is a silent killer, relentless and ruthless, marching through our streets. It is stealing breath, stopping hearts, breaking spirits and numbing pain only to multiply it. There is an invisible force, malicious and merciless, taking our loved ones one by one and turning vibrant lives into fading echoes. How do we fight this silent killer, when its poison lingers everywhere in the land? Now, 47,000 Canadians have died of fentanyl overdoses. This is more than died fighting for Canada in the Second World War.

Never before seen homeless camps and drug dens overtake once-beautiful communities, where contorted bodies lie half dead on filthy sidewalks in scenes resembling third world squalor. The government tranquilizes our people with an unsafe supply of tax-funded narcotics, from which those same troubled souls then graduate to even more dangerous drugs.

Such drugs as fentanyl, which is 100 times more potent than heroin, now abound in our streets. We have seen a 200% annual increase in overdose deaths in the last eight years, with the worst death counts massing in British Columbia, where the policies of soft sentences, non-enforcement and taxpayer-funded drug distribution have all been most enthusiastically embraced. We were told that these policies were based on science and data, yet all the science and data have proven these policies lethal and proven the counterfactual, which is to say that the places doing the opposite are far more secure and safe.

Not only is this killer ravaging our streets, but it is now spilling over our borders. In November, the RCMP busted Canada's largest-ever drug superlab, which had 54 kilograms of fentanyl. This is almost triple what the U.S. border patrol seized crossing the border this year. This lab contained enough fentanyl and precursor chemicals to produce more than 95.5 million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl. It also seized 89 firearms, including 45 handguns, 21 AR-style rifles and submachine guns, many of which were loaded and ready for use. All of these guns were easier for criminals and drug kingpins to get than ever before, not in spite of, but because of, the policies of the NDP-Liberal government. Small explosive devices, large amounts of ammunition, firearm silencers, high-capacity magazines, body armour and $500,000 in cold hard cash were all part of the drug bust.

The RCMP said that the lab was believed to be behind the “production, and the distribution of unprecedented quantities of fentanyl, and methamphetamine”. In October, the RCMP seized 33 tonnes, which is to say 66,138 pounds, of chemical precursors used to make the same deadly drugs. The RCMP says Canada is now a producer and exporter of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. In other words, despite our massive consumption of these deadly drugs, we actually produce even more than we consume, and we sell the surplus abroad.

CSIS has identified that more than 350 organized crime groups are actively involved in domestic illegal fentanyl marketing. CSIS says the precursor chemicals are largely sourced from China. Eighty per cent of chemicals used in fentanyl production are actually legal and unregulated in Canada. They can be procured here and imported from China, and even if they were not legal, the head of the border guards recently said that 99% of the incoming shipping containers go completely uninspected. Therefore, it would not even matter if they were banned, because the government would have no way of stopping them from coming in.

Eighty-four per cent of organized crime groups are involved in some aspect of the illicit drug trade, primarily in distribution. Street gangs are involved in the fentanyl trade, and street gang involvement in that trade has more than doubled in five years. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol seizures of fentanyl doses from Canada have gone from 239 kilograms to 839 kilograms. More than three times as much fentanyl was caught in 2023 than in 2024. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol seized 14 pounds of raw fentanyl in 2022; this has risen to 43 pounds. That, by the way, might not sound like a lot, but 43 pounds of fentanyl is enough to kill almost 10 million people. This illustrates the deadly nature of this poison.

What has the government done in this regard? First of all, it passed Bill C-5, reducing penalties for the murderers who produce and market these drugs. I call them murderers. Members might ask how I know that those producing these drugs have committed murder. The answer is that if we produce fentanyl on a large scale, we know with statistical certainty that we will kill people. There is no doubt that, on a statistical basis, if we are selling 2,000 or 3,000 hits of fentanyl, someone will die as a result of our actions, and we know it.

The government has allowed these murderers to get out of jail and go back to the streets, where they legally import the ingredients that go into this deadly poison. It can then be sold to people who are hopelessly addicted and have no way of getting off the drugs. Simultaneously, the government has found millions of dollars to subsidize the distribution of synthetic opioids that are supposedly used to “reduce harm”.

As my colleague from Kildonan—St. Paul will point out, as I split my time with her, there is no doubt that people are graduating from and using the proceeds of these tax-funded opioids to fund the fentanyl trade. While we have had wild inflation in almost every product that is on the market in Canada, one thing that has become vastly cheaper is synthetic opioids, such as the ones the government funds. They have gone down, not because they are cheaper, but because the greatest part of the price is paid through taxpayer-funded subsidies, supposedly to reduce the harm. We now know that this has done precisely the opposite. It not only murders our people but now threatens our livelihoods as our American friends demand swift action to secure the border, to protect their people against the recklessness of the government.

That is why common-sense Conservatives are making proposals to stop the drugs. We call for the repeal of Bill C-5, the law that allows these drug kingpins to go free. We must act to reinstate longer drug sentences for the kingpins, to ban the importation of fentanyl precursors, to buy high-powered scanners, to put more boots on the ground at our ports in order to stop fentanyl and to reinforce that we have a strong border, as we did nine years ago.

It should not have taken Donald Trump to make this point. Our government should have been thinking about our people. It is not because of another president that we should take these actions. It is because we believe that not one more mother should bury her face in her hands out of the heartbreak of losing a child. We must take the swift actions to secure our borders, to lock up the drug murderers, to clear our streets of these toxins and poisons, to invest in treatment and recovery, to bring our loved ones home drug-free and to heal our nation.

Public Accounts

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to this important motion on behalf of the great people of Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, and I just want to remind the Speaker that I will be splitting my time with the great member for Chilliwack—Hope.

I am always happy to discuss the issue of border security and how we can maintain and improve our relationship with the United States. Given that Canada and the United States share the longest undefended border in the world, addressing the very real and very serious public safety issues we are facing at home are of the utmost importance to managing our relationship with our biggest trading partner and greatest ally.

U.S. President-elect Trump has made it very clear that he will impose a crippling 25% tariff on all Canadian products if Canada does not fix our chaos at the border and get a handle on the fentanyl crisis that is plaguing our country. While Conservatives agree that these issues must be addressed, we do not want to address these issues for the sake of the United States but for the sake of Canadians.

For far too long, the Liberal government has taken a soft-on-crime approach to drugs at our borders, and as a result, Canadians are suffering. The Prime Minister made a deal with the British Columbia NDP to decriminalize fentanyl, crack and heroin. He lowered jail sentences for drug kingpins and did nothing to prevent the import of the deadly precursor chemicals that are cooked into poison in drug superlabs and sold on our streets.

The Prime Minister has also broken our border. Since the Prime Minister came to power, there has been a 632% increase in U.S. border patrol encounters with people illegally attempting to enter the United States from Canada. In the first 10 months of 2024 alone, the U.S. border patrol has intercepted more than 21,000 people illegally crossing the border from Canada into the U.S.

The NDP-Liberal government sat back and watched as the backlog of the number of asylum claims in Canada skyrocketed from 10,000 to 250,000 over the past nine years. There are as many as 500,000 people in Canada who are here illegally. Statistics from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection show that roughly twice as many suspected terrorists have tried to cross from Canada into the U.S. as from Mexico into the U.S. in recent years. Additionally, in the 12 months leading up to September 2024, U.S. border agents seized about 11,600 pounds of drugs entering the United States from Canada. Seizures of fentanyl doses more than tripled between 2023 and 2024, rising from 239,000 doses to 839,000 doses.

The issue of fentanyl production in Canada has skyrocketed under the Prime Minister. Drug kingpins and gangsters are allowed to operate with impunity, and if they are caught, many of these criminals can serve their sentences in the comfort of their own homes under his soft-on-crime policies. A memo drafted by CSIS to the Prime Minister recently stated that CSIS identified more than 350 organized crime groups actively involved in the domestic illegal fentanyl market, and “China continues to be listed as the main source country for a variety of precursor chemicals intended for the illegal production of drugs in Canada and some illegal drugs smuggled into Canada.”

We are producing so much fentanyl here in Canada that we have become a net exporter of fentanyl rather than an importer of the product. According to the RCMP, the fentanyl threat in Canada has shifted from one of importation to one of domestic production. Almost all of the fentanyl consumed in Canada is now “produced in Canada”, according to a criminology professor at the Université de Montréal, and there is actually a production surplus.

While we are certainly exporting fentanyl to the U.S. and distributing it in the domestic market here in Canada, the RCMP's federal serious and organized crime program has stated that the fentanyl that is produced in Canada is also destined for export to southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, where drug users pay considerably higher prices for fentanyl than in Canada and the U.S.

How did we get here? Why have we become a net exporter of fentanyl? Before 2019, fentanyl was effectively legal in China. We could go on the Internet and find legitimate Chinese companies selling fentanyl online. This Chinese-made fentanyl flooded Canadian streets throughout the mid-2010s.

In 2019, Beijing finally caved to pressure, primarily from the United States, and blanket-banned the production and sale of all fentanyl analogues. However, it continued to fuel the fentanyl crisis by directly subsidizing the manufacturing of the precursor chemicals and materials that are used to make the drugs by traffickers.

In April 2024, U.S. investigators discovered a Chinese government website that revealed tax rebates for the production of specific fentanyl precursors as well as other synthetic drugs, as long as those companies sold them outside of China. We know this had a significant impact on the Canadian production of fentanyl, because seizures of precursor chemicals increased dramatically between 2020 and 2021.

In the first half of 2021, our border officers seized 5,000 kilograms of precursor chemicals, up from 500 kilograms the year before. Last year, the U.S. sanctioned several Chinese companies and individuals who have profited from the trade of precursor chemicals without facing consequences in China. So far, Canada has not sanctioned any of these individuals.

The enforcement of both exports and imports at our west coast ports is also dismal. The public safety committee recently did a study on auto theft and learned just how little we are searching and seizing at our ports. In 2023, the mayor of Delta, British Columbia, called out the Liberal government for its failure to address the rampant crime at the port of Vancouver.

He stated, “We're witnessing a relentless flow of illegal drugs, weapons and contraband into Canada through our ports and that threatens our national security.... They need to recognize this. We have a fentanyl crisis going through our community here in Delta, through Metro Vancouver, through the province, across the nation”.

Just recently, Mark Weber, the CBSA union head, was on Global News and stated, “We search less than 1% of what comes into Canada”. It is clear that something must be done. We must act to fix our borders and stop the rampant production of fentanyl within our borders.

Many constituents have been writing and calling to ask the following: Why did it take so long to address these very real issues? Why did it take the United States president-elect threatening crippling tariffs for the Prime Minister to take any meaningful steps to address the chaos at our borders and the scourge of fentanyl on our streets? Was it not enough that parents were seeing their children overdose on fentanyl in homeless encampments, that Jewish communities faced threats from ISIS sympathizers who came to the country on student visas or that Canadians were being gunned down by gangsters with illegal guns that had been smuggled over our borders?

All these terrible realities that Canadians are facing should have been enough for the Prime Minister to act. Instead, he stood by and told Canadians over and over again that they have never had it so good. Only Conservatives have a real plan to address the crime and chaos at our borders and to bring our loved ones home drug-free. Today, we are asking all parties to support our common-sense plan calling on the Liberal government to address the illegal importation of fentanyl precursors and the illegal production and export of fentanyl here at home.

Conservatives are calling on the government today to reverse Liberal Bill C-5, to reinstate longer jail sentences for drug kingpins, to ban the importation of fentanyl precursors, to buy high-powered scanners, to put more boots on the ground at our ports to stop fentanyl and its ingredients from coming into our country and to stop buying unsafe supply of opioids.

Conservatives want to stop drug overdoses so that not one more parent has to bury their son or daughter, after 47,000 other Canadians have died. That is more than we lost in the Second World War, and it represents a 200% annual increase in drug overdose deaths since the Prime Minister's radical liberalization of drugs.

The Liberal government and everyone in this place must put partisanship aside, not just for the sake of team Canada but for the sake of the families who are suffering, and support our common-sense Conservative plan. We must secure our borders and bring our loved ones home drug-free.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

You mentioned in your answer something else I want to hone in on. You mentioned that Canada is a high-value, low-risk environment. I agree 100% with you that it's the case. There's one aspect of that on which I'd like to get your comment. In our country, it used to be that if you were convicted of production of, importing or exporting of schedule I substances—including fentanyl, meth, cocaine and heroin—it would result in mandatory jail time.

The current government's Bill C-5 eliminated that mandatory jail time and, in effect, allowed house arrest for those convicted of moving and producing large quantities of very serious drugs, some of which are wreaking havoc on our streets today, as you mentioned. How do laws like Bill C-5 and like Bill C-75, which created a revolving door in our justice system, imposing on judges the requirement that they release those who are seeking bail and making it very difficult to take someone off the streets who's been arrested for some of these very serious offences...? When you couple those two bills alone, how do they play into Canada's being a high-value, low-risk environment for organized crime?

École polytechnique de Montréal

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, December 6 is always a hard day. It is always a harsh wake-up call. It brings back all the trauma. Exactly 35 years ago today, the unthinkable happened. It was in Montreal, on the eve of exams. The holidays were approaching. It should have been a time for celebration, but on that day, 14 female engineering students at the Polytechnique in Montreal were murdered in cold blood, because they were women.

The tragedy left us stunned with horror. We could not believe what had happened. We were all in shock. These 14 young women were all university students in the prime of life. They were probably feeling carefree, like people are at that age, when they think that they have everything figured out, that they are invincible, that the world is their oyster. That is how it should have been for these women.

Remember the 14: Geneviève Bergeron; Hélène Colgan; Nathalie Croteau; Barbara Daigneault; Anne‑Marie Edward; Maud Haviernick; Barbara Klucznik‑Widajewicz; Maryse Laganière; Maryse Leclair; Anne‑Marie Lemay; Sonia Pelletier; Michèle Richard; Annie St‑Arneault; and Annie Turcotte.

They were separated from the male students and murdered in cold blood because they were women. It is unspeakably cruel that a woman can be murdered and suffer this fate simply because she is a woman. In fact, it was so shocking that this Parliament decreed that every December 6 would be the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women.

I was in shock when it happened. I was 22. Obviously, we were all shaken by this tragedy. I also remember the moments surrounding the event. These women were my age. They were studying at university, just as I was. They had dreams and ambitions. In an instant, all that was shattered. Understandably, there were countless collateral victims, including family, colleagues and friends. Their journey came to an end, while mine continued. For all these reasons, they will forever be in my thoughts.

Today we pay tribute to these women, but we also pay tribute to the women in Canada and women around the world who are victims of hate and violence in all its forms. Thirty-five years later, this day is still necessary and just as relevant. Unfortunately, intimate partner violence, sexual assault and misogynistic speech still exist. The year is not over yet, but in 2024 alone, in Quebec, there have been 25 femicides. In Canada, there have been 169 so far in 2024.

In Canada, gender equality should not even be an issue. It should be settled question. It should be absorbed and learned from an early age. Gender equality is not up for debate. Everyone needs to understand that violence is never the answer, that women need to be completely free, free to study, free to govern, free to be MPs, free to be ministers, free from fear and from all forms of violence. They should never have to be in a constant state of hypervigilance when they walk down the street, as we are far too often. Only a woman can say that these days. Only women can say that.

At the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, I have incredible colleagues from all parties who I work with to improve this sad state of affairs, to ensure that women can move around freely and safely. We are making recommendations to the government.

Respectfully, I would like to make a few observations. This is not coming from a place of partisanship. I just want to share these ideas so that we can work together to fix this very sad trend of increasing violence. Violence has increased by 116% in Canada since 2015. Whether it is sexual assault or child abuse, all this violence is happening right under our noses. In my riding, people are firing guns. We really need to put positive measures in place in order for things to improve.

Quebec's justice minister, Simon Jolin-Barrette, says that Bill C‑5, which has been introduced in the House, allows people who commit violent acts to serve their sentences at home. Then there is Bill C‑75, which allows violent offenders to be released on bail. Normally, we would not allow people who have committed such acts to serve their sentences at home or to be released on bail. This is something that worries us on this side of the House. I am not saying this in a partisan way. The police forces are telling us this. Quebeckers are very sensitive to what the Quebec government says. It was Quebec's justice minister who shared this message about sexual assault. Women are being assaulted and men are walking around free. I say men because we know that 90% of sexual assaults are committed against women.

Today we are paying tribute to the victims. It is nice, and we are all giving fine speeches. We are joined in sadness. However, let us also take a close look at the actions we are taking and the decisions we are making as legislators. When we realize that something is not working, that we are not getting the desired results, let us have the collective intelligence to review, in this place, the measures that have been taken. I will pick up on something that was said earlier by the minister, whom I like very much. She talked about measures that have been put in place and an action plan she wants to table. I will just make this comment.

I would be remiss if I did not take a few seconds to commend the organizations in my colleagues' ridings and in my own riding, such as Fondation jonction pour elle, the Centre-Femmes Bellechasse, the Centre-Femmes l'Ancrage, and the Association féministe d'éducation et d'action sociale. These are all women helping other women in need, including women fleeing violence. These women welcome them and help them move forward.

In tribute to all the injured, abused and murdered women, I say this: We must never forget them.